Of Grammar and Time Travel
by Valieara
Summary: Post2001. In which Sam obsesses over the note sent from 2010.


_Disclaimer: I don't own the Stargate franchise, and no money is being made. Any copyright violation or infringement was unintended._

_Timeframe: Season Five, post 2001_

* * *

She hadn't thought about that note in four months. 

Well, yeah, it had actually come around seven months ago, but she was a scientist. People of that generalized profession are bound to think about things long after they happen – in fact, it was only because of Colonel O'Neill's order that she _did_ stop thinking about it. It was just so fascinating, the possibilities of where – or when, she supposed – the note had come from seemed practically endless.

She knows she'd probably have been fascinated too if it had been, oh, say, SG-15's leader that had sent the note back in time. But while all SGC team members had to be crazy to a certain extent, a note from the future splotched with blood had SG-1's writing (pardon the pun) all over it. She could even see her own hand in whatever insane plan it was... had been?

You'd think that, considering the circumstances, she'd be allowed to be interested on more than just a professional level.

Because while the note may have had the Colonel's name on it, the crazy, deluded, _insane_ plan had her own signature. It doesn't really matter too much what that particular plan was. She's wondered where Daniel's, or Janet's, or Teal'c's handwriting was - she knows it's there, because she refuses to accept the possibility of a future, _any_ future, without them.

What was so terrible, or rather, what _would have been_ so terrible, if that note had never come, or if they hadn't listened to it? A small, traitorous part of her tells her that maybe it _was_ that Daniel or Janet or Teal'c or someone else wasn't there, but that's still not enough for her to go back on all that she stands for on the issue of time traveling. What was so wrong, so apocalyptic in the future-that-wasn't that even _she_ would agree to change the future?

Future... present… past… whatever. If she was any less tired she wouldn't hesitate to go through all the quantum mechanics she knew to prove which one it was, but she's too afraid it's just grammar and the late hour getting to her.

She tries to come to terms with the fact that the she-that-would-never-be didn't just help change the history of the world, but ironically helped bring the end of the world - in fact, the entire universe. Maybe it wasn't the end of the world as most people thought of it, like the Goa'uld actually took over, because as Daniel explains, that's just the end of the world as we _know_ it. The world would still go on, just so much differently we couldn't even compare it to what we once knew. In this case, the universe actually ceased to exist. In the true meaning of the phrase, it was the end of all things.

Sam wonders if the older her, the _other_ her, the her-that-wasn't-her that doesn't, and now, never did exist, thought of this before she went ahead. She thinks she almost had to have. It was still essentially her, after all. She still can't get by the fact that she advocated a sort of pity kill, for Earth. A pity kill that they had all staked their lives on apparently, hoping that their younger versions were smart enough to listen. That way, it didn't matter one way or the other if they died: the world would be resurrected from whatever the hell it had fallen to.

The other her had to have known, at least, that their plan would sort of have to work – as soon as that note came through the gate, they would have created an alternate universe, no matter if the others listened to their older, sager advice.

Sam often wondered if maybe that future world was still out there… or maybe it was still parallel, and it would just _become_ that future world later on…

She'd spent hours for months thinking and wondering about it all, the implications, and the ramifications… what did it all come to in the long run? She'd space out in the commissary with the guys or at a girl's-night at Janet's house, and the fragility and tender balance of what she worked (or _played_, her guilty voice said) with every day hit her. At least Daniel and Janet, at least the scientists in them, were every bit as desperate as her to know.

Colonel O'Neill, however, was not. He went from good-natured grumbling about her focus on the note to irritation, and finally to actual concern, which actually was the first clue that she was too involved.

"You're obsessed, Carter!" he'd finally shouted at her in her lab one day, grabbing her forearms. "Just let it go, dammit. There was a reason we didn't put it in the note."

If she hadn't been so willing to make him stop worrying about her, she would have told him that it wasn't technically _them_, it was actually a them from a future alternate reality, but she didn't think he'd listen. Or appreciate it. All she probably would have gotten was marched down to McKenzie's office.

Anyway, she knew the lack of detail in the note was probably her own fault.

Finally even the friend and doctor in Janet overruled the scientist, and even she started making noises of concern about her mental health. Exasperated, wishing her best girl friend wasn't her doctor who incidentally decided whether she was physically and mentally fit for duty, Sam relented. The note was forgotten.

But then, last week, that whole business with the Aschen brought it all up again. A few of the variables had been filled in, and a few answers finally put to the end of the equations. It still didn't completely add up, and she suspected it never would – but that was alright. The picture tentatively sketched out now of a time and place that would never exist was almost unreal. There were no bodies, no blood, no death – just desperation, anger, and fear.

No hope for new life.

Drastic population decrease.

Sterility.

Sam thinks she knows now why the other her was so desperate to change what happened. She guiltily wonders if she wasn't affected if she would have gone ahead. In any case, it worked. But at what cost to them? She shakes her head – it seems kind of silly to be worrying about the fate of people, _them_, who don't exist anymore – never did exist.

No, she thinks. Science may say otherwise, but the blood on the note left enough of a legacy, _their_ legacy, to prove their struggle, and yes, _existence_ to her.

Unwilling to work anymore, she turns off the machines and doohickeys and lights, and leaves the lab. Putting on her leather jacket, she goes home.

The Colonel would be happy, at least.


End file.
